


The Fastest Man Alive

by Whovian_On_Mars



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Flash, Angst, Bisexual Lance, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith, Injury, Keith keeps fucking getting in trouble, Lance is one speedy boi, Langst, M/M, Pining, Sam Holt is Harrison Wells, Shiro is Keith's uncle, Slow Burn, Superhero!Lance, both Keith and Lance are completely oblivious, galra - Freeform, lance is the flash, like they've been living together for twelve years wtf, superhero lance, tags will be added/change, the flash au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-06 11:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13409871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whovian_On_Mars/pseuds/Whovian_On_Mars
Summary: 'My name is Lance McClain, and I am the fastest man alive...'Lance McClain had to live under the same roof as Keith Kogane for most of his childhood after his mother was killed by an unexplainable event and his father wrongly imprisoned for the deed. A forensic scientist working at Voltron City Police Department, Lance is struck by a stray bolt of lightning and suddenly gains the ability to run faster than the speed of sound. Lance is completely oblivious to Keith's pining over him.Keith Kogane had to live under the same roof as Lance McClain for most of his childhood after his uncle Shiro had took Lance in as his legal guardian. A journalist at the Voltron City Picture News, Keith catches glimpses of a red streak fighting crime and traveling faster than what his eye can pick up, and is soon hell-bound on finding what this red streak is, even if it kills him. Keith is completely oblivious to Lance's pining over him.Well, at least the two have one thing in common with each other.(The Flash AU with Lance as The Flash and Keith as the reporter who keeps getting himself in fucking trouble and Lance has to haul ass to get him out of it.)





	1. The Lightning Bolt

To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first. 

You need to believe in the impossible. Can you do that? 

Good. 

You see that red blur? That's me! Zoomin' around Voltron City faster than sound!

That too! There I am again! Man, I will never get used to that feeling. That feeling of the wind in my face, the electricity that surges through every fibre of my being as I run, the crackling of lightning that permeates my entire existence. Wow, I guess the speed has not only made me fast but poetic as well. Who would've thought?

I'm rambling again, aren't I? I have to stop doing that.

Anyways, to the point...

My name is Lance McClain, and I am the fastest man alive.

 

* * *

 

March 18th, 2000

It started with a crack, a sizzle and a hiss, then the torrential roaring winds and thunderous bouts of lightning downstairs. It was what woke an eleven-year-old Lance McClain up out of his slumber, after all. And what a shame, too - he was interrupted from the middle of a cracker of a dream about dinosaurs and mint-chocolate ice-cream.

Rubbing his eyes, Lance looked around to see where the noise was coming from. That was strange - he couldn't find the source. One look to his left to the door told him all he needed to know: an ominous yellow light buzzed and flickered from the gap under the door. It must have been coming from downstairs in the living room or something. That was where Lance always saw the lethargic blue glow of the television late at night when his dad was tuckered out from work. Lance's tired head only realised that the sound of crackling and sizzling, what he presumed was the thing causing the light from under his bedroom door doubled in volume. Lance felt sorry for the neighbours, as they were going to be woken up too.

A glance to Lance's left, however, made him furrow his delicate eyebrows in confusion: the fish tank was floating! Well, at least, the water inside it was. Lance had half a mind to take a look at all his goldfish and see if they were alright - that air could not be doing much good for them. However, Lance's attention was completely focused on the sound coming from downstairs. Gradually, Lance eased himself out of bed, his tiny feet padding his way through his room and out the door, making sure not to make a sound lest his dad heard him and told him to go back to his bed. 

The deafening sound of wind and whirling only worsened as he got closer to the source, and Lance's mind could only wonder whether it was something other than a program his dad watched late at night that Lance would never understand. That all changed when he heard the tell-tale signs of his mother's voice, seemingly in distress, her wails only just audible above all the wind in the house (his pyjamas were now properly billowing off his lanky frame, something a mere draught couldn't accomplish).

Lance jolted down the flight of stairs and into the entrance to the living room to find...

To find...

What the hell was he looking at?

Lance's eyes burst out of their sockets in a mixture of confusion, some morbid fascination and dominantly fear. He was absolutely terrified, and that was just scratching the surface. His mother, on her knees in the middle of the living room surrounded by yellow streaks of God-knows what, was screaming in fear.

No.

There was a difference, Lance would come to learn when he grew up, that there were many types of fear. There was the creepy type of fear, the uneasiness you get when you step into a room and something doesn't feel quite right. The feeling of something breathing on your shoulder when you know for certain you're alone in a room. There was the terrified type of fear, where you anticipate something terrible going to happen, like being seconds away from the recieving end of a chainsaw held by a madman, or hanging off a ten-storey building with your grip on the edge waning away.  
The face of Lance's mother, his mama, wasn't any of these two types of fear.

It was the type you get when you are revolted, disgusted, outright sickened by the thing you have seen.

His mother was horrified. And that horrified Lance.

"Mamá!" Lance's instincts took over his voice, screaming out the one name he thought he'd never have to say this way. His mother turned to him, frightened out of her mind, tears leaking out of her eyes like no tomorrow. She screamed out just as loudly towards her only son, fearing now not only for her life but for the person she held most dear.

"Lance!" She cried. "No, please, get out! Go!" Her desperate pleas were either drowned out by the crackling of what looked to be lightning and blurs in the house, or Lance's racing mind was going too fast to comprehend.

"Mamá!" Lance repeated, in a sort of call-and-response act, except much more morbid.

"Emilia!" A new voice cried out, a voice Lance would never mistake anyone's for: his father. He quickly raced down into the room where all the commotion was happening, and protectively wrapped his arms around his son in a vice-like grip. 

The yellow blurs and bolts of lightning enveloped Lance's mother in the middle of the living room like a barrier, refusing to give access through it into the middle where she knelt. The streak seemed to be circling her - that was what it looked like to Lance, anyway, as it was all moving so fast he couldn't tell what was going on. He only realised later that in all the ruckas, the window had actually been shattered from all the destruction that this blur caused - tables were overturned, papers were flying everywhere, and basically, anything that wasn't securely bolted around was being thrown around the room.

"Carlos! Please, go!" Was all Lance could make out. He was fully freaking out now, tears and all, and would only repeat the same phrase he'd said many times before, his mind not able to utter anything else.

"Emilia, hold on!" Carlos, Lance's father, shouted at her for reassurance which honestly didn't help the situation one bit. He then turned to his son, and the image of his father's distraught face was burned into his conscience forever.

"Run, Lance! Run!" 

Those words.

Those words and a man in yellow was all Lance remembered with full certainty before he found himself cold and alone across the street from his house. 

 

* * *

 

12 years later...

"Oh, sorry!"

"Excuse me, comin' through!"

Lance was always using these words. For someone who liked to take life in the fast lane, he was surprisingly late a lot of the time, and today was no exception. He was usually tardy when making his way to his job as a forensic scientist stationed at Voltron City Police Department, and having a boss hell-bent on kicking his ass every time he screwed up didn't help. Nevertheless, he actually wanted to keep his job as it was the only practical thing he could do for a living (apart from asserting himself within the drama and performance industry, but he didn't need a reminder to tell him how that went the last time he tried it).

As the lanky man ducked and weaved through the bustling crowds of Voltron City, unsuccessfully trying not to bump into anybody (apparently, no amount of "VCPD, coming through!" would get through to the fucking people with their own things to do), Lance eventually arrived at the crime scene where he was supposed to be, but a solid twenty minutes after he was told to arrive. Whoops. His tall stature gave Lance a pretty good view of things above people's heads, and could see ahead of him the scene of a bank robbery, with police cars and yellow tape; the lot. How typical. Immediately, Lance mentally noted everything on the scene of the debacle: shattered windows of a glass door indicating forced entry or exit, two totalled cars a way down the road in smoke which the fire department were currently taking care of (that was probably due to the getaway car)-

"McClain!"

Fuuuuuck.

Lance whipped around at the mention of his name by none other than Captain fucking Sendak, the big man in the VCPD. Lance braced his sorry little ass for the reckoning that every officer and member of the police force in this city feared.

"Late again, I see." Sendak said, his facial expression unreadable but voice full of malice.

"Yes, sir. Sorry I'm late, I forgot to set my alarm clock." was the pathetic excuse Lance gave, sheepishly averting his gaze from his captain and opted for looking down at the ground.

"Right, McClain. Need I remind you that the last excuse you gave me was 'car troubles'."

"Yes, sir."

"And do you know what's strange about that excuse?"

Lance bit his lip, his cheeks turning another shade of red. "I don't own a car."

"Lance over here was running an errand for me, that's why he was late."

Oh, thank fuck, Shiro to the rescue.

Detective Takashi Shirogane was a godsend in Lance's mind - and there was no exaggeration there. He was the one who not only raised both Lance after his father was jailed for life for the murder of his mother, but also raised his nephew, Keith Kogane, at the same time. 'Shiro', as Lance called him, was a father figure and a friend. The fact that Shiro had to raise both him and another teenaged boy and provide for both at the age of twenty-three bewildered Lance at every moment he looked at Shiro, and Lance would forever be in his debt. And he always ended up saving Lance's ass.  
Shiro turned to Lance, expectant and arms crossed, "Did you get the thing I asked for?"

Being put on the spot, Lance tried to look convincing as he rummaged around his pockets and found a half-eaten breakfast muffin, crumbling in the wrapper. He sheepishly handed it over to Shiro, who was trying not to look disappointed.

"Here, Shiro." Lance muttered. Shiro raised an eyebrow. "I may have taken a few bites...-"

"McClain, do your job." Was Sendak's only thought on the matter. Man, how he was not firing this guy was a mystery to the captain.

Yep, and that was Lance's que to go and actually do the job he came to do here. Slipping past the two officers, the forensic scientist went and knelt down next to one set of tire tracks, and his mind raced faster than his legs ever could, that was for sure. 

Rear-wheeled super-wide tires...

Approximately twelve inches...

Asymmetrical tread...

And that was all Lance needed to know. Lance McClain, detective genius. He stood up with a confident grin on his face.

"Aaaand, the getaway car you're looking for, officers, is a Mustang Shelby GT500. They have rear-wheeled super-wide tires specific to that model. Twelve inches with an asymmetrical tread. How's that for doing my job?" Lance said this rather smugly, hands on hips, as if he was showing off (only to Captain Sendak, mind you; Shiro didn't need any proof that Lance was an excellent forensic scientist). The aforementioned Captain Sendak didn't respond, which only fueled Lance's ego.

Shiro grinned inwardly as he jotted down in a notepad everything Lance detailed. Sendak frowned, but everyone at the VCPD knew that 'the frown' was him being disappointed in being proven wrong or being showed up. Lance was doing the latter. 

"Officer Shiro, who are we looking for here?" Lance said after he'd been picking around the scene for a few more minutes. Lance never liked the label 'officer Takashi', and Shiro always insisted on  
people calling him his shorter nickname, so Shiro it was, on and off the field no matter how improper it was. Shiro didn't mind, anyway.

"The Mardon brothers." Shiro replied plainly and to the point. "The security camera footage showing the intern desk of the bank clearly identified Clyde Mardon at least, and the other is assumed to be his brother Mark."

"The Mardon brothers?" Lance inquired, "Aren't they the ones who robbed the jewelry store on twenty-second and Harborough last Tuesday?"

"The exact ones. They've been spiking in activity recently." Shiro said with audible concern in his voice. He got back to the subject on hand, "The getaway car must've caused a little bit of commotion down the street, as you can tell by those smoking hatchbacks on their sides. Luckily, no one was killed, but one driver's in critical condition. The Mardon brothers are nowhere to be seen, and neither is the getaway car. However, thanks to your deductions we can now pinpoint a certain type of car and track it with street camera footage."

"Alright, officers. Back to the station, and make it quick. We have four more cases to work through in the next three days, and I expect overtime to cover it." Sendak's remark made every officer in the vicinity scowl at the thought of overtime, but it had to be done. 

McClain sighed, picking himself up off the road, brushing off his clothes and stretching his slender frame from kneeling down so long. Lance would usually be scowling with the rest of the VCPD, but today was a big day - the big day.

The day the S.T.A.R Labs Particle Accelerator activates.

 

* * *

 

Oh, man. Keith was going to kill Lance.

This was the third fucking time Lance had made a move on the BLT he stored in the fridge this week, and no amount of hastily-written paper notes on the cling-wrap around the sandwich which read 'Keith's sandwich - fuck off, Lance' would get him to stop. Keith considered buying his own mini-fridge for his room, but Shiro wouldn't like the prospect of another fight between his own nephew and Lance McClain - the slowest man alive. 

Keith, practically overwhelmed by the syllabi from his journalism degree and gradually-building paperwork practically making a home on his desk from the Voltron City Picture News, was dead. After making another BLT sandwich and writing another angry note addressed to Lance stuck on top of it, Keith collapsed onto the couch flat on his stomach. He had half a mind to go grab ten packets of paracetamol and make it rain pills, but decided if Shiro were to slip on the floor after that escapade, Lance would never make him hear the end of it.

The sound of the door clicking open caught Keith's attention, making him groggily turn his head to the doorway to find Shiro step through. Keith's demeanor immediately turned from tired and sour to something... less tired and sour. His uncle always seemed to have a comforting vibe about him, and counteracted Keith's contrastingly dark and broody personality at the times he needed it the most. Not only did Shiro step through the door, but his boyfriend Matthew Holt, as well.

"Hi, Keith!" Matt greeted with a certain cheeriness to his voice. Keith had an inkling as to why. Matthew worked as one of the head engineers responsible for building and opening the S.T.A.R Labs Particle Accelerator, 'generating dark matter itself!' as Matt proudly announced on more than one occasion. He was also the son of one of the greatest minds in Central City and possibly the United States: Samuel Holt, the founder of S.T.A.R Labs himself. The particle accelerator was actually how Shiro and Matt met - Shiro was always a science geek, having a degree in physics, and one too many S.T.A.R Labs conference later and Shiro started taking Matt home. Shiro half-regretted taking his boyfriend home on so many occasions, because it meant that Lance formed a strong bond with him, and Shiro always ended his dinners with Matt with two aspirins and a lie down for his 'meme overload'. The same usually went with Keith, but occasionally he'd let off steam by fucking around at his uncle's expense.

"Keith, get off the couch. You have enough to do without letting yourself laze around and procrastinating." Shiro gave Keith a micro-lecture with a stern but calm tone to his voice while he walked up the stairs and disappeared to the second floor, which meant that Keith should do as he was told before Shiro got a little more annoyed. Giving a great, overdramatic 'ugh!' as he pushed himself off the couch and cracked his neck, Matt chuckled.

"He does that to me, too." Matt said with a grin on his face.

"If you think that's the worst thing about him, then you have no idea what you've signed up for." Keith muttered, tiredness slurring his words. Nodding his head around a few times to shake off the  
sleepiness plaguing his head, Keith gave Matt a smile.

"So..." Keith started, "The 'Big Day' has finally arrived, huh?"

"Hell yeah, it has!" Matt fistpumped the air, his messy strawberry blonde hair bobbing on top of his head, which reminded Keith of an excited child, which was basically what Matt was. Keith's smile grew even more, and he could see why Shiro liked him so much. Matt continued.

"Man, over a decade of hard work finally finished! Sometimes I wake up and cannot believe I am the forefront of this scientific leap and bound in history! Well, actually, my dad and sister is as well. I can't discredit them too much, can I? Yesterday, I was working for hours on the micro-arcing discharged carbonate switchgears and I was so angry at why the electric current wasn't properly stabilising within the carbera-"

"I'll stop you right there, Matt. All I'm hearing is scientific jargon I wouldn't be able to understand in a million years." Keith interrupted, laughing.

"Oh, sorry. I'm just excited, is all." The engineer adjusted his glasses, which still fell down his nose.

"So, are you staying here for a while?" Keith asked as he sat back down on the couch, picking up one of the files he was fishing through earlier from the VCPN.

"Ah, no. Actually, I have to be at S.T.A.R Labs in half an hour, and I just came here to pick something up." Matt replied as he walked to the kitchen. Keith furrowed his eyebrows at Matt's mention of picking something up from the house, thinking it strange, especially since Matt was in the kitchen for the said 'something'. Shiro's steps drawing closer from down the flight of stairs hinted his arrival,  
despite not saying anything to indicate it, which drew Keith's mind off Matt. Shiro's hands found Keith's shoulders, which made Keith jump.

"You still haven't gotten off the couch." Shiro said matter-of-factly. Keith cringed.

"Well, I'm doing work!" Keith argued in retaliation, slapping Shiro's hands off his shoulders with a pout.

"Work at a desk, Keith. It's better for your back."

"Yeah, right. I see you covered in documents from the police department all the time on the couch. I wouldn't be surprised if you used case reports as a sleeping blanket."

"Do as I say, not as I do." Shiro muttered with a smile audible in his voice. Shiro sat down on the couch next to Keith despite what he'd been saying earlier.

"Where's Lance?" Keith casually threw the question out there.

"Well, you know him. On the job all the time. I don't know how he does it, being able to stand examining all those dead bodies." Shiro replied, letting out a breath. Keith rolled his eyes, expecting that answer. Keith was just a smidge jealous of Lance about the fact that he finished his degrees earlier than Keith. That kid was always slower than him in the practical things, but when it came to subjects he was passionate about, you couldn't beat him if you tried. So there Keith was, stuck as an amateur journalist while still in college while his 'adopted brother' who was technically not adopted and technically not his brother was off working at the same place as his uncle.

"Shiro, you're a cop." Keith deadpanned.

"That's right. I don't particularly enjoy being surrounded by dead bodies in or out of the field, thank you very much." The older man replied. A buzz from his phone ended the conversation there, and Shiro picked it up. His expression turned serious, muttering some 'uh-huh's and 'yeah's until he said "I'll be there" and hung up. Shiro turned to Keith immediately. "It's work. We've got a lead on some people we're looking for. They want me to lead a raid investigation." 

"Matt's not gonna be happy." Keith said, raising his eyebrows, "He'd probably want you to watch the opening of that accelerator thing."

"Ah, well. Duty calls, unfortunately." Shiro wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of the current situation, but he had to answer his call. The police officer got up off the couch and shoved his jacket on. Keith turned his head as his uncle walked for the door.

"Be careful, Shiro."

Shiro gave Keith the smile he always gave him when Keith asked him to take care of himself whenever he went into a dangerous situation. And he was out out the door, ready to take on whatever person that threatened the lives of Voltron City. Keith would never truly understand how Shiro was able to keep himself afloat juggling his and Lance's lives with the duty of being a police officer. Sighing, the journalist returned to his work, still sitting on the couch as he flipped through and wrote on pages.

A creak brought Keith's attention back to the other person who was still in the house. He remembered Matt hadn't left yet. Actually, Keith had to ask him what Matt needed to pick up from here. 

Turning his head to the doorway, Keith opened his mouth to question Matt-

Keith froze.

In front of him, he caught Matt midway through reaching for the door, frozen like a deer in headlights.

With Keith's BLT sandwich grasped tightly in his hands.

Matt bolted.

So did Keith.

"You little shit!"

 

* * *

 

Detective Shiro looked down at his notepad as his partner pulled up next to what looked like an old, abandoned barn on the outskirts of the city. Yup, this was the place, Shiro reassured himself, cracking the knuckles on both of his hands.

Both of the officers in the police car opened the doors beside them at the same time, hand guns cocked and in down near their waists. Shiro noticed the light outside was quickly fading, not to mention the storm clouds above them were thickening with every passing minute, and the possibility of being able to see anything in that barn was next to none, so he pulled out a flashlight, promoting the officer beside him to do the same. 

This was the place they'd been told where the Mardon brothers were supposedly hiding. While Shiro was sorting out paperwork at the office, Lance and the forensics team were hard at work, sifting through hours worth of security camera footage with nearly no breaks (that's what Shiro had assumed, knowing Captain Sendak's vigorous methods). The detective had been called in at around seven o'clock, and light was running out by the time he and his officer partner got to the location. The S.T.A.R Labs particle accelerator was due to officially open and activate at around eight, and while Shiro wasn't exactly happy to miss his boyfriend's big moment, work was work and catching criminals was, unfortunately, a priority at this stage. Hopefully, Lance's instincts (and deductive skills) were right and Shiro and the officer he was designated were lead to the right place, because if they weren't then this would be one hell of a waste of an evening. However, one glance at the run-down barn in front of him told Shiro that Lance was most likely right. Carefully, Shiro pushed open the door and lead the way, his partner not far behind.

Shiro was right - if he didn't have his torch, there would have been no way to see anything in here. Shiro also noted the skies were getting much darker than before, which would have intrigued him if not for the task at hand. 

"You see anything?" Shiro whispered to his partner, keeping one eye on him and the other on his surroundings.

"Not yet." The other officer replied, obviously referring to the missing presence of the Mardon brothers, or at least any traces of them. They'd have to dig deeper.

Detective Shiro noted down a few things in front of him: there were two 'levels' to this barn, a second floor that extended like a verandah, overlooking the ground floor. Half of the place was taken up with many vehicles and objects - stuff like tractors, cars, even small planes and bi-planes that looked like they hadn't been used in years. There was straw and hay strewn all over the ground the two walked in, which actually helped in dampening the sound of their footsteps. Taking a better look, the roof above the two was reinforced with metal, the same going for the beams that held up the roof. The metal was rusted, and the oxidation patterns indicated they were made of iron or some sort of alloy including it, and the gentle creaking it gave out whenever a gust of wind blew from outside told Shiro that the whole thing was old and could collapse at any moment. The dark atmosphere gave the officer next to the detective shivers, but Shiro was unphased - during his time in the army, he'd been in many training and on-duty situations like this.

The thin line of light the torches the two police officers held emitted left a large bright-white imprint on the walls and hay bales inside the shack, and was about to go deeper into the building until his partner noticed something to their left underneath a rugged tarp.

Pulling the tarp away, the two police officers found what they'd been looking for.

A run-down Mustang Shelby GT500.

In nearly the instant when the oil-stained tarp was removed off the dented vehicle, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot rang through the barn as much as a gunshot would in an echo-less wooden outdoor-ish environment. Shiro, serving in the army for so long, could tell that the shot came from a handgun not even a second after the shot was fired. In fact, he could even tell what type of bullet was shot - sometimes it freaked out even himself how he managed to do that. But that didn't matter, because now his partner, who was right next to him a few seconds before, was slumped on the  
ground with a red weeping bullet wound directly between his eyes. 

Shit.

Shiro scrambled to get cover and hid on the opposite side of the car, his gun locked and loaded by his side. He only got a few seconds to look at his comrade's fallen cadaver, a pang of guilt and shame befalling within Shiro's chest but quickly shook it off. The military did things like that to you. He couldn't mourn for the officer yet, though, unless he wanted to end up like the aforementioned officer. Shiro remained as calm as he could, and drew on his training in the army. The assailant shot from behind, and hit his partner in the head, which meant that they were most likely at the doors or outside the barn. Damn, they were waiting for us, Shiro cursed internally. 'They' were obviously either Clyde or Mark Mardon, and Shiro leant down under the car to take a look.

Clyde Mardon was standing at the door of the barn, gun pointed at Shiro's face.

Shiro got out of the way before said Mardon brother could blow his head off.

A plane engine started.

Many bullets were being thrown in both directions now, Clyde's shots ricocheting off the Mustang Shiro was ducking behind, and Shiro's missing or hitting the inside of the barn's walls. Shiro could hear the plane moving from the right of him to in front of him. The plane was hiding behind the barn, and was most likely their getaway vehicle. Shiro would have thought that a plane was a little bit unorthodox as a vehicle to get away in, but he wasn't going to contemplate on that now. Clyde's shots slowly but surely diminished in frequency, and Shiro could hear footsteps moving away from him, which were quickly drowned out by the plane's roaring engine and aggressive fluttering of a single propeller.

Shiro took this as his sign to jump up out of hiding, and jump up he did. Aiming his gun at Clyde with precision only seen in an army veteran, Shiro pulled the trigger, but didn't land any shots. They were pot shots anyway, with the distance and accuracy of his hand gun put into the equation. However, Clyde heard the shots, and stopped running towards the plane in which he was going to fly away in, and Shiro noted that his brother Mark was flying said plane - he could just make him out.

Clyde smirked deviously, and Shiro could tell that, even from a distance. Clyde raised his gun - but not at Shiro.

He was pointing at the rickety rusted foundations of the building - foundations which, if shot at, would surely crumble.

A few shots courtesy of the younger Mardon brother rang through the electrified air, and only then did Shiro realise his hair was raised on the back of his neck - quite literally, the storm clouds above him had now gathered into what looked like a cell, and an electric field surrounded the entire city, the air possessing quite a strong smell of ozone. That was all running in the back of the detective's  
mind, however - he was concentrating more on the ominous rumbling of the roof above him. Wooden tiles falling from the ceiling was Shiro's cue to get the fuck out of that barn.

But he was too late.

Of course he was too fucking late.

A wooden plank, dusty and ancient, landing directly on his shoulder was enough to incapacitate the former army officer, falling to the dirty ground in absolute agony, and Shiro reckoned he probably busted a collarbone or dislocated his shoulder at the very least. Looking up to where Clyde was, he could see the perpetrator running away and grabbing a hold of the plane, which then proceeded to take off. Shiro couldn't even move while it was happening, and he felt completely devoid of any power he held on them before.

More bits and pieces of rubble fell on the detective, a particularly sharp one slicing a giant fucking gash on top of his nose, making him cry out - and by cry out, that meant properly scream. He didn't know why, but maybe it was because of the combination of powerlessness he felt, the guilt of his colleague getting shot square in the head and the feeling that he was going to die right here and right now, and that he let Lance and Keith down. 

Shiro could hear - no, feel - the roof about to crash down upon him, ending his life there, and Shiro took one more look at the plane soaring into the stormy sky above him, taking the criminals he  
chased after with so much effort, away from him. What he saw was a rapidly expanding shockwave coming from the middle of the city, the plane getting hit by a fantastic yellow flash of lightning, the  
left wing getting blown off, and the plane exploding mid-air. Pretty, Shiro thought.

His thoughts were abruptly cut off by the numbing pain in his right arm and the sweet relaxation of unconsciousness and sleep and _absolutely nothing at all._

 

* * *

 

_"And we're live, outside S.T.A.R Labs despite the incoming weather which is only going to get worse. The torrential downpour has in no way effected the particle accelerator which is up and running smoothly according to S.T.A.R Labs C.E.O Samuel Holt..."_

Lance gave a small smile at the news report and turned around back to his work in his fairly spacious forensic science laboratory, knowing Matt must have been so proud to see the thing he was working on for nearly half a decade up and running. Taking a yellow piece of paper with some various notes he wrote down, Lance McClain got off his seat at his desk, the news report running in the background.

Walking to one side of the lab to the other, the forensic scientist strolled up to the large board with a giant piece of paper on top of it, filled with notes and newspaper clippings about various assignments and cases he'd been tasked to fill out, the yellow piece of paper in his hand.

Pulling a rope underneath the giant piece of paper where his assignments were placed, said paper was quickly whipped up from underneath itself in a roll, revealing the actual tackboard: it looked similar to the one before, also filled with notes and papers and newspaper clippings.

About the night his mother was killed and his father was sent to prison for her murder.

With care that he would not otherwise give when regularly pinning something onto another tackboard, Lance took a pin from a box beside him and stuck it through the piece of paper, then the board in a relatively blank space (well, there weren't any true blank spaces on the board, only spots that were deemed less important compared to what he was about to pin on it).

Lance stared at the clippings and papers and sheets on the board in front of him with something that could only be described as longing, his eyebrows gently furrowed and his mouth pursed, the lightning from the storm outside cracking like a muffled yet powerful whip and streaks of light brightening the room whenever it did. The newspapers stuck to the board were from the night it happened, or at least from the year 2000, and the titles all went along relatively the same line: 'local doctor kills wife'. It made Lance's heart absolutely keen in agony at the thought, and around the same time clench in anger at the people who were too important or whatever to care about what Lance had to say.

He tried to tell them what he saw that night. He really did, but every person he talked to didn't believe him. Not even Shiro. He tried describing the roaring winds and the yellow lightning and blurs that surrounded her mother before her demise, but not a single soul would buy it. They all chalked it off to denial or post-traumatic stress conjuring hallucinations. However, there wasn't any time at any point where Lance doubted what he saw that night.

He was determined to find who killed his mother.

Sighing a sigh that was heavy with the burden of twelve years of motherless life, Lance pulled the paper back down onto the board, hiding the evidence he'd collected on the night his mother died. He didn't know whether it was out of shame, out of embarrassment or something else entirely, he just hid it because he felt like the right thing to do. The rain outside was coming down hard now, and it left him with his thoughts and concerns of his mother's death, and only that. Only that and the rain. It was his concern and his concern only - something he learned the hard way after twelve years of being shut down and vetoed again and again and again-

_"-Hold on: we've just heard word that S.T.A.R Labs is... being evacuated as fast as possible, and the premise being put under lockdown-"_

Lance whipped around from the board and out of his memory-induced stupor to the small desktop monitor that rested on his desk, the news reporter seemingly becoming more panicked in her tone but keeping a professional stance. Lance took no notice of that as he walked towards the screen and leaned down over his desk to hear the news report better over the storm roaring outside.

_"-The storm may have caused a malfunction in the primary cooling system, so we're told, and officials have been unsuccessful in their attempt to shut down the system entirely. Staff members of the S.T.A.R Labs engineering team are currently trying to control the reaction that is said to be growing in intensity within the-"_

Blackness. The power to the entire lab had gone out.

Lance's eyebrows knit together, his lanky frame stiffening when he turned his head up from the now powerless computer screen to the window in front of him.

S.T.A.R Labs, which he had a good view of from his lab window, was erupting. Then, it released some sort of shockwave which, when it passed over Lance, seemed to invigorate his entire being. Which brought his attention to behind him, where the roof-mounted sunroof was shaking and rattling, eventually breaking free of its confining locks and swinging open, the rain and wind filling the once-dry laboratory.

Lance, quickly running over to the open window, took a face full of whirlwinds and stormy rain drops, making him squint as he looked up at the grey, open sky above him. There was a way to close the window via pulling a chain that was attached to a pulley that could open and close the overhead sunroof. Lance took the chain and pulled it, and found that it was stuck. Pulling it harder did no good and only gave him the jingling of chains rather than the dryness of a completely sealed sunroof.

However, something else caught his attention.

Floating liquids.

Holy shit, floating liquids.

Floating liquids like his fish tank on the _night his mother was killed._

The various chemicals used for forensic sciences contained in plentiful differently-shaped vials and flasks that were strewn across the shelf behind him in no particular order, and the liquids in them started to rise. Slowly but surely, the chemicals were floating mid-air as if gravity didn't have a hold of them. Lance could only stare at them in complete terror, like a deer caught in headlights, chills in his spine returning from the night his mother was murdered.

A rumbling from above him drew his attention back to the roof, albeit a bit too late.

A bit too late for Lance to dodge the impending lightning bolt growing above him, and striking him down from the sky.

In a flash of yellow light, Lance was struck and sent flying through the laboratory, his grip on the chain releasing itself, letting Lance fly into the shelf of floating chemicals behind him.

Lance spasmed. He didn't register anything of what just happened, but he knew two things:

One: he only had mere moments of consciousness left.

Two: he felt absolutely brilliant.

_Absolutely fucking brilliant._

And then he was out.


	2. Waking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance's eyes widened. Oh, God. It was happening again. The strange, wacky shit was happening, and Lance didn't know it was because he was on something or something actually problematic was happening to his body.
> 
> He needed to get back to S.T.A.R Labs as fast as he could, so he set off into a run and somehow managed to, in the span of less than a second, divert off course, run five meters across the length of the alleyway and crash against the boot of a police car parked on the side of an alley, shattering the back windscreen in the process.
> 
>  
> 
> _'What is happening to me...?'_

_'Rah rah ah-ah-ah!_

_Ro mah ro-mah-mah,_

_Gaga oh-la-la!_

_Want your bad romance...'_

"Why are you playing this crap, Hunk?" Pidge wrinkled her nose at the Lady Gaga playing from the stereo within the lab while she looked down upon Lance's comatose body from one side of the bed.

"He likes it." Hunk simply shrugged, on the opposite side of the bed, and took a bite out of the carrot in his hand.

"And how do you know that?"

"I checked his Facebook page."

"Of course you did. Only you would stalk a comatose patient's social media to find out what songs they like." Pidge rolled her eyes, her tone imposing but not harsh.

"Hey!" Hunk called out in protest as he got off his seat to read Lance's vitals off the computer screen on his desk, "Don't even try to deny you haven't done a little bit of internet stalking on Mr. McClain over here. You practically hack into government agencies on a daily basis, you're one to talk!"

"You got me there." Pidge wagged her finger at Hunk knowingly from the other side of the room, working on some of the tech that laid strewn across the laboratory benches in the Cortex of S.T.A.R Labs.

A murmuring from behind them caused both scientists to whip around to face their patient.

"...I want your love, and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance..." Lance's mouth mumbled out pseudo-coherent song lyrics of the tune that was playing above him, the owner of said mouth seemingly unaware of the things he was saying, and Hunk and Pidge looked at each other, then back to Lance, then back to each other.

"Holy shit." They both said in unison.

"HOLY SHIT!" Lance screeched as he jerked upright on the bed in the middle of the lab.

"HOLY SHIT!" the two young scientists shouted again in unison, jumping out of their skins. Hunk remained silent in quiet shock, eyes wide at the now-awake Lance McClain while Pidge was swearing her arse off like a sailor - not that Hunk was surprised about that.

"Where the hell am I?" Lance asked with a little more force than he meant, but considering the circumstances it wasn't like you could blame him. The last thing Lance remembered was a great, yellow flash that surrounded his entire vision while in his laboratory at VCPD, but that was it. Anxiousness, confusion and, eventually, fear set upon Lance's being as his eyes darted around the lab frantically, the two other people in his vicinity at the back of his mind as he tried to make sense of it all.

"Crap crap crap shit fuck he's awake he's awake-" the small tech expert was scampering around the laboratory, switching her attention between Lance's vitals and her notes and at Lance himself at speeds she'd never regularly perform at without a quadruple espresso with Red Bull instead of water, and Hunk was now all in his face, shining torches in his eyes while muttering some medical jargon with concerned precision only a trained doctor could pull off. At the back of his mind, Lance wondered how the smaller scientist actually had a job as a scientist when she was losing her God damn mind like this.

"Dad, you need to get down to the cortex, like, right now!" the smaller scientist ordered into a communicator on the nearby table.

Lance, copping a face full of bright light from the torch the larger doctor was using to examine his vision, cringed outwardly and winced at the sudden flash, looking around. He noticed he was in a bed, with no shirt on, in the middle of what looked like a science laboratory - the chemical vials and pieces of unfinished technology carelessly laid across tables and floors gave it away somehow. Over the brightness of the torch in his face, he saw the doctor taking a look at his eyes was wearing a yellow headband that stopped his mid-length unkempt brown hair from falling in his eyes that honestly suited him, and a yellow shirt and khaki shorts with a pristine white lab coat over the top. Lance whipped his head around to the other side of the 'mini' scientist screaming her head off into comm systems and saw she had unruly spiky brown hair and round glasses resting on a small perky nose and holy shit she looked just like Matt, and was wearing a laid-back green windsheater with the sleeves rolled up her fair arms. If it weren't for the fact she was throwing 'fucks' and 'shits' left and right as she scrambled from one side of the lab to the other, Lance would have found her quite adorable. So, so many thoughts were pummelling his newly-awoken brain, like 'what happened? Where am I? Why am I here? Why am I half naked and being examined by strangers? Who are these people? Where's Shiro? Where's Keith?" All he wanted was for his senses to stop being overstimulated, for him to have a moment of fucking peace and let him absorb all of this god damn information-

"Everyone, fuck off!" Lance suddenly wailed, not barked like an order but screamed like a desperate, wounded animal. 

Everyone stopped. Well, that worked, Lance thought, as he put his head in his hands.

"Woah, man, chill!" The larger, darker man put his hands up, recognising that Lance wanted everyone to 'fuck off', as he put it, "You're at S.T.A.R Labs, dude." Hunk said in a softer voice as he put a wide hand on Lance's shoulder as support. Lance flinched at the touch, but took it as a sign to stand up, so he shook the plain white covers off his legs - thank fuck he was wearing pants - and stood on his feet which, luckily, were still functioning, albeit feeling a little tipsy.

"S.T.A.R Labs?" Lance croaked out, perplexed. Why the fuck would he be at S.T.A.R Labs? "Who are you?"

"My name's Hunk, this is Pidge, or Katie if you want to call her that-"

"No, he doesn't get to call me Pidge. Only my friends call me that." Pidge snapped, walking up to Lance in a hasty fashion, "I need you to urinate in this." She deadpanned at the really confused Lance, holding up a small sample container that was obviously designed to hold... that fluid.

"No, he doesn't. We can do that later, it's my job to test his urine anyway." Hunk stopped Pidge right there, snatching the sample container from the smaller scientist's hand.

"Hey, if you're not going to put it through the chem cam, then I'm going to."

"You barely even touch the thing, let alone put urine in it!"

"Well, who was the one who built it? Me, and yet you never seem to do your job as a doctor and test the urine samples we take from him."

"Guys! Getting a little side-tracked here!" Lance whipped both his hands up to Pidge and Hunk's faces, who were standing on either side of him, and the room went quiet apart from the ambient beeping of tech and the heart monitor on the side of Lance's bed behind him. It was only then when Lance realised he had EEG and EKG nodes attached to his temples and the back of his head, which made him freak out and forcefully remove them. Pidge gasped.

"That's thousands of dollars worth of equipment! People don't have respect for technology these days..."

"Pidge, take one good look around here and look me in the eyes and tell me you take care of your technology." Hunk responded with a tone that had dealt with this sort of situation many many times.

"Alright, enough! Tell me what's going on!" Lance's long face was red, getting a little annoyed at these two's antics, and moved out of the way of the two to get some more room because apparently scientists don't have any sense of personal space.

Hunk sighed, dropping the little quarrel with his colleague and turning his full attention to the previously comatose patient. "You were struck by lightning, dude." 

Lance's facial features hardened. He stuttered something akin to a 'what?' and furrowed his brows. Was that what happened that stormy night? He was struck by lightning? What were the chances of that? Lance had watched a documentary about lightning once and he was sure the narrator said that it was really rare for it to happen, so he was naturally having a hard time believing what he was being told. Shaking his head, Lance turned around from Hunk and Pidge, to face the rest of the laboratory-

Oh my God.

He had abs.

The mirror Lance had swivelled around to look at showed Lance something that he'd originally thought was a poster. A projection of a male's upper body which he had to admit looked damn pleasing if he did say so himself. A millisecond later and the lanky man realised it was him, it was fucking him, he had abs holy crap-

"Ohmygodihaveabs." Lance blurted. 

"Yeah, well, see, the thing is-" Hunk started, but was cut off again by Lance.

"Lightning gave me fucking washboard abs."

"That's the thing, your muscles should be atrophied but instead they're in a chronic and unexplained state of cellular regeneration-"

"Da~mn! That is one hot bod!" Lance's demeanor drastically switched as he flexed his lower abdomen in the mirror, posing as he took in the sight that was presented, and Hunk made a mental note for his medical logs that Lance would probably be a handful to deal with in the upcoming months. Whatever this bolt of lightning did to him, he wasn't complaining. Yet.

"Hey, come here." Pidge suddenly grabbbed his shoulders despite her short stature, and forcefully pulled him to a seat on a table despite the taller man's cries of protest. When he was sitting, although uncomfortably, Pidge looked him dead in the eyes with an ice cold glare that could freeze the sun. He was glad he had Hunk as his doctor and not this girl, as he could already tell her bedside manner would be appalling.

"You were in a coma." Pidge threw the words out there as straighforward as she could, and it hit Lance like a ton of bricks. And then, the reality of the words himself hit him like a fucking oil tanker's worth of bricks.

Lance was in a coma.

And he'd watched too many soap operas to know what happened when the person who was in the coma asked 'how long?'.

"For how long?" Still, Lance asked anyway.

"Nine months."

The voice that responded to him didn't belong to Pidge or Hunk. In fact, it came from behind the three of them, and Lance turned around to see no fucking way that's Samuel Holt.

Lance's eyes popped out of his head when THE Sam Holt, the man with five PhDs, the inventor of the sub-atomic wave function Particle Accelerator Mark II, and the CEO of S.T.A.R Labs himself wheeled into the Cortex in a wheelchair (okay, that was new, but Lance was sure as fuck not going to ask THE Sam Holt about why he wasn't able to walk anymore). The forensic scientist's jaw went slack as he gaped at his idol shamelessly, to the point where the other two scientists beside him started to get weirded out. Pidge's eyebrows lowered when the silence between the four became palpable.

"Uh..." She started, a little creeped out by the fact that a half-naked man was gawking at her father, "Are you going to say something, or?"

"No, no. It's fine, Katie." The older man in the wheelchair assured his daughter, and turned back to Lance with a smile that could only be described as morbid curiosity. "Welcome back to the land of the conscious, Lance McClain. I'm sure you have a lot of questions, which is why we have a lot to discuss. Come with me." And with that, Mr. Samuel Holt wheeled away from the room, and beckoned Lance with one hand.

Lance was all too happy to oblige, nearly running down the Cortex to follow him, only stopped by Pidge shouting at him from across the room. Lance turned around and caught a face full of a shirt which landed on his head, then into his hands.

"Hey man, your abs are cool and all, but if you're going to freely show them to my boss then I would start to suspect things." Hunk teased with a small but well-intended smirk on his face, and Lance felt the heat rising from the bottom of his neck to engulf his cheeks and shoved the piece of clothing over his torso, and followed the CEO of S.T.A.R Labs out of the cortex and down the winding curved corridors of the institution belonging to the former, leaving the other two scientists behind.

"It's hard to believe I'm here talking to you, honestly," Lance started as he walked at the pace of the speed of the wheelchair Samuel was in, "I've always wanted to meet you face to face! You're like, my ultimate idol!"

The grey-haired Holt didn't face him while he said this, only looking forward towards the corridors that winded and twisted before the two. However, he did recognise Lance's praise with small smiles and creases that showed up around the edges of his eyes whenever he did. Letting out a small sigh, Samuel adjusted his glasses and looked up to the taller man, now even taller considering that the aformentioned was restricted to a wheelchair.

"Well, you certainly went to great lengths to do so." Sam responded to Lance's praise with a joke, which earned a chuckle from the other, "Unfortunately, after nine months, you may find myself and the rest of my company to be a little different to what you've been expecting."

Sam turned a corner through the grey labyrinth-like corridors which lead to a large heavy solid-steel door that opened when the older scientist punched in the correct entry code on a keypad next to it. Sam entered, and Lance found it lead to a balcony of some sort - it was an elevated ledge that overlooked the actual particle accelerator itself (thank God it was fenced, as the drop below was quite significant).

Lance stared - no, oggled - at the sight before him. He knew the particle accelerator was pretty big, but big enough that the diameter of the tube in which particle smashing took place was the size of a three storey building? Jesus, Lance was getting vertigo just looking at the ceiling, something that he stopped looking at after he nearly hit the railings that would have not saved him if they weren't there. And then, after regaining his balance, Lance looked down and nearly lost his balance again.

What Lance saw was mind-bendingly horrific. Down below, a significant portion of the particle accelerator floor was singed black in contrast to the dark greys of the metal panelling that made up the accelerator itself and the yellows, blues and reds that made up the coiling that ran around the inner circumference of the tube like an annulus. In the middle of the war-zone looking crater that dug deep not only into the accelerator but the ground beneath it was a fizzled out, absolutely decimated core of some sort. The core was round, circular and dwarfed by the size of the accelerator interior, looking like a singular medicine pill in the middle of an empty jar. The capsule-core-thingy was burnt to a crisp: the sides were shaved and rounded as if the extreme heat had moulded it somehow, and frayed wires sticking out the sides were still sparking, telling Lance that it was most likely not safe to clean it up. The middle of the core was cracked open like an egg, the inside a cacophony of wires and metal bits and bobs that Lance had no idea what they were, but knew that they were no longer in any sort of working order. Now he was really oggling, but not out of awe but out of a mixture of terror and disgust.

"What happened here?" Lance finally asked Samuel, who was patiently waiting next to Lance, letting him take in the sights below and above him.

"You went into a coma the night the particle accelerator exploded." Sam said plainly, adjusting his classes so he could look up at the shocked young man in front of him, "Seventeen people died that night, and many more were injured, myself amongst them as you can tell." Sam gestured to his legs, and Lance gave a sympathetic gaze in consolation. Sam was looking down at the ground, seemingly deep in thought with a sad crease in his brow, and Lance was about to say something before the other man sucked in a quick breath and continued.

"Nine months ago, the particle accelerator went online as planned and for forty-five minutes I had achieved my life's dream that I had worked for over a decade to accomplish. And then..." Sam straightened himself in his wheelchair and took a deep breath, "...and then there was an anomaly. The electron volts became unmeasurable, the ring under us popped-" The scientist gave a wild hand gesture moving upwards, "-and the energy from that detonation was thrown into the sky to smother Voltron City like a dark matter blanket and that in turn conjured a storm cloud-"

"-That created a lightning bolt and struck me." Lance finished Samuel's sentence solemnly, looking down at the wreckage of the once-glorious contraption, face nearly as forlorn as the man beside him.

"That's right." Doctor Holt responded. "I lost a lot that night, and not just my legs..."

Lance turned to him, expecting some elaboration, but recieved none. Quickly, Samuel shook off whatever came upon him before and continued where he left off.

"I was actually recovering myself when I heard about you, Lance McClain. The hospital you were stationed in was experiencing unexplainable power outages every time you went into cardiac arrest - which, in fact, was a misdiagnosis, because you weren't flatlining, Lance..."

Lance turned to the senior scientist, expectant and wide-eyed with child-like curiosity.

"...Your heartbeat was moving too fast for the EKG to register it."

The lanky man pursed his lips in confusion, staring at Samuel like he was some sort of cryptid that manifested in front of him. Of course, Holt didn't expect Lance to understand what was happening to him right away, and to be honest, not many people at the moment did. Sam just shot Lance a small reassuring smile and turned his electronic wheelchair around with a flick of a finger on the control pad on one of the arms, and the chair set off, prompting Lance to break out of his perplexed stupor and follow him back to the Cortex where they started.

Samuel entered the doors of the Cortex first, with Lance not that far behind, and both Pidge and Hunk looked up from what they were doing but not moving from their designated spots - Pidge in the middle of the laboratory situated at a semi-circle desk, her fingers gracefully dancing across keys on a keybaord attached to a three-monitor computer, and Hunk in the small medical bay off to the side of the room, him looking through reports of what Lance assumed to be his while he was out in a coma.

"Now, I'm not the most popular person in town these days, per se..." Sam started as he moved his wheelchair further into the room, Lance tailing him and listening to his every word, "But luckily, detective Shirogane and your adopted brother gave me permission to bring you here where Pidge, Hunk and I were able to stabilise you."

Lance flinched and immediately stiffened at the mention of Shiro and Keith, and slowly but surely, his priorities started to fall into place.

Oh, crap.

_Shiro and Keith._

"Shiro and Keith...?" Lance managed to use his voice, his throat suddenly really dry.

"They're the ones." Hunk said from behind him, abandoning his medical post with two canisters of water in his large hands, handing one to Samuel. "Keith especially talks a lot."

Pidge walked up with Hunk, but didn't give any remarks. Lance didn't know why, but he was too far enveloped in memories and the sudden irresistable urge to see Keith and Shiro before he imploded to notice. For the third time in the span of no less than twenty minutes, the crushing reality of his situation fell on him like a meteorite: he was in a coma for nine months.

Keith and Shiro hadn't talked to him in nine months.

"I have to go." Lance blurted out while Hunk and Samuel Holt were quietly talking to each other about some sciency jargon, and Lance quickly set out for the door before any of the other three could protest. Unfortunately, Pidge spoke up first.

"Hey, wait- you can't!" She argued, waving an electronic pad in her hands.

"Yes, actually, Katie's right." Samuel tacked on his two cents after Katie's - why did the name 'Katie' sound familiar - and wheeled around to face Lance who was in the middle of the doorway that lead out of the Cortex at this point, "You're still going through changes and there is so much we don't know about what's happening to you."

"I'm fine. Really, I feel normal!" Lance put up both his hands to gesture he was in fact 'fine', but in all honesty, Lance had no idea whether he was fine or not. There was no telling what that bolt of lightning did to him. But right now, Keith and Shiro took the number one spot on his priority list, and not even the secured safety of his well-being would stop him from seeing them for the first time in nine months. "Thank you for saving my life, by the way! I owe you guys one! See you!"

And with that, Lance was gone. All three scientists in the room had a feeling that he was going to be back soon.

* * *

Keith didn't particularly enjoy his job as a journalist, nor did it make him want to tear out his hair in defeat and frustration. Every week working at the Voltron City Picture News was a series of pseudo-comfortable, 'it's alright' days which consisted of writing and publishing and, on some odd occasions when his boss assigned him to the barren desert that was the Voltron City sports column, editing. Don't get him wrong, Keith didn't hate his profession as a journalist - he wouldn't be doing a uni course on it if he didn't. He just wished he could skip all the underdog amateur shit and get on with his life as an executive producer of a picture news station or a news reporter for the live news feed on television. Keith was very confident in himself and his abilities and, frankly, his co-workers were pretty lacking compared to him. Except for Allura. She kicked ass.

At the moment, Kogane's day was going pretty slow: apart from a few visits to the office either praising or giving scorn to his latest article and the occasional pit-stop by VC Jitters' coffee to get him and Allura something to drink for them to actually function at all, Keith was essentially confined to the barriers of his small little office desk hidden away at the first level of the VCPN, destined to keep on writing the current news assignment he was designated to report for at least the next couple hours or so of the day - in fact, the office was nearly deserted as it usually was a good hour or so after lunch. As mentioned before, Keith's day was going pretty slow.

His adopted brother, on the other hand, was going so fast that his brain was on the verge of an aneurysm.

Lance McClain nearly tore the door to the VCPN central office down, and that was a pretty significant feat considering the doors were automatic, doing it all with a ridiculous grin on his face. It caught the attention of the few people who were still working in the compound, the people actually nosy enough to care sending him condescending looks, but his smile didn't falter one bit. No, it was going to take much more than that to deter Lance McClain.

Lance also caught the attention of the person he came all the way from S.T.A.R Labs to visit: Keith Kogane.

"Keith!"

Keith's head whipped up at the familiar sound of Lance's voice, and even after nine months of no verbal contact with him, he still never forgot his voice. The reporter found the forensic scientist standing just inside the building, right at the door, as plain as day like he hadn't been in a fucking coma for nearly a year.

Keith stared at Lance, eyes bugging out of his head.

Lance stared at Keith, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face and his arms outstretched as if to say 'did you miss me, bitches?'

It was like that for a while. The two staring at each other from across the room.

Then, Keith slowly got out of his chair.

He walked towards Lance, keeping eye contact with him the whole time, face expressionless. Lance knew that 'expressionless' was usually Keith's face of choice for most of his day (other than 'angry and brooding'), but an unreadable Keith methodically strolling up to you was disconcerting on its own, let alone being in Lance's place and haven't seen his best friend/adopted brother in nine months.

When Keith reached Lance within arms distance, he stopped for a few seconds. For those few seconds, Lance thought he was going to get suckerpunched in the face and his smile faltered.

His smile abruptly shifted to surprise when Keith gave him the most bonecrushing hug he'd ever recieved. Like, holy crap. Not even Shiro had ever given him one that made the air in his lungs rush out of him so suddenly. Keith didn't seem to pay attention to the sudden 'oof' Lance released more from inside his chest rather from his mouth, firmly establishing the vice grip of his stronger-than-they-look arms around him.

They stayed like that for a few seconds, with Keith's face buried in Lance's shirt (whoops, he forgot to return that to S.T.A.R Labs) and Lance felt heat twinging at his cheeks which eventually permeated throughout his entire body. He wasn't complaining, though, even with the stares he barely registered out of the corner of his eye. Regardless, Lance was smiling through it all and quickly returned to embrace Keith's hug, wrapping his arms around him.

Eventually, Keith pulled away to look Lance in the eyes, and his expression, much to Lance's relief, softened.

They hardened back once again when Keith gave a rather proper punch to Lance's arm, who pulled back at the sudden show of violence.

"Ow!" Lance cried out, probably just a little over-dramatically for what the punch was worth, "What the hell was that for, you asshole?"

"That was for you working late and getting yourself stuck in a months-long coma." Keith's expression didn't waver, and to prove the legitimacy of his reason for punching the other, crossed his arms around the top half of his chest and huffed.

"You didn't have to punch me..." Lance's melodramatically hurt expression eventually dissolved into a pout, and turning his gaze away with a quick haughty flip of his head to the side, also crossing his arms. "Geez, way to greet a lightning bolt victim." When Lance diverted his gaze, Keith copied in the same fashion.

Once again, the two 'brothers' remained like that for a few solid moments, both of them unmoving. The tension between the two seemed to be electric (mostly from Lance's side, pun not intended, but you couldn't blame him for being afraid given the spot he was put in). The tension was only broken when Keith snickered, a smile threatening to break through his lips and his cheeks tightening in a way Lance only knew they did out of twelve years of living with him. Lance's grin was also breaking way out of its confines as well. Soon, the snickering turned into chuckling, and the chuckling turned into pelts of hearty, true laughter shared between the two.

It was then that Lance McClain knew nothing had changed between him and Keith in the past nine months of his leave.

When the pelts of wheezing and bending over died down, Lance wiped a tear from his eye and looked Keith in the eyes again, this time with sincerity only Keith would recieve from him. Keith did the same, and smiled one of his rare, beautiful smiles which Lance held above most things in his life.

"I missed you." Keith said.

"I did too." Lance replied.

"You were in a coma, how can you miss me when you're unconscious?"

"I dunno, but I know I did." 

Keith felt touched. But after the wave of happiness eventually subsided into something that the more rational part of his brain could deal with, Keith's expression turned from relaxed to uptight and solemnly looked down at the ground, remembering the night that Lance...

That Lance...

"I watched you die, Lance. Your heart stopped. So many times..." Keith put bluntly, but despite the lack of tone in his voice, there was a sea of emotion behind them, something only Lance or Shiro would sense out of the black-haired man. Lance was caught off-guard, and quickly tensed up as well - Keith's point of view of Lance's entire ordeal was coming to light. While Lance may have been asleep during the entire time of his hospital visit and the following weeks which turned into months at S.T.A.R Labs, Keith was awake for it all and no doubt scared to death about him. Lance sighed, and sadly smiled when Keith raised his gaze once again to Lance's eyes. The taller man took the shorter's hand from his side and slowly placed it upon his own chest, and let Keith feel his heartbeat. 

"My heart's still beating Keith. There's nothing to worry about." Sure enough, Lance's heartbeat was still there. After a few seconds of this, Keith's eyebrows furrowed, a reaction Lance didn't expect but still made his heart skip a few beats, metaphorically speaking.

"It's really fast..." Keith said, his expression darkening in confusion. Lance looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and confusion, until he heard a yelp from in front of him.

Behind Keith, Allura, Keith's coworker and senior journalist of the VCPN, tripped over a particularly slippery bit of floorboarding, her making a sudden noise of confusion as the stacks of papers she carried between her hands lose their balance on them and tumble. Allura managed to regain her balance, but the papers, unfortunately, did not. Maybe she tripped because she couldn't see in front of her, because those stacks of papers were pretty damn high, Lance thought, but he didn't have time to think about that as the stacks of writings and papers began their descent down to the floor.

Lance waited.

And waited.

And waited...

...Huh. They're not falling.

They're not falling.

_The papers weren't falling._

Lance looked at the floating papers behind Keith like they were bats out of hell, and his jaw slackened in response. When Lance had looked at them for a time he swore was over at least ten seconds, he noticed the papers were in fact falling, but just in really really slow motion. What the fuck had those guys given him at S.T.A.R Labs while he was in a coma? Because this was for sure one of the trippiest trips he'd ever had in his life (not that he'd ever done anything like that before... Okay, he had, but Shiro didn't need to know that).

Lance looked at Keith's face, which seemed relatively idle, but the longer Lance stared, he noticed a slow swivel in his neck like he'd noticed the commotion behind him. He turned his attention back to Allura, whose face was frozen in nonplussed surprise, one eyelid drooped down further than the other in quite a dopey manner. Lance would have found it funny in any other situation, but frankly, the small sparks of light that flickered from his shoulder kind of took the spotlight at the moment. A few more seconds of living in this slowed-down world, Lance came to realise something he should have forseen while he was at S.T.A.R Labs.

They were right.

Something did happen to him after the lightning bolt.

And just like that, everything just suddenly... restarted.

The world around him returned to its normal pace, and the papers floating in the air miraculously gained gravitational traction, scattering across the office-space in a clumsy sprawl. Keith's head snapped back, and looked upon the accident behind him and immediately helped the poor paperless woman on the ground pick up all of her stuff, while Lance watched on in awe and horror. Mostly horror, really. He had no idea how to explain what just happened, and that was scary. His ideas on what did happen would be clogging up his thought passages by now, but for some reason, his mind stilled in some sort of frozen serene calm.

During that serene calm, that complete and utter moment of omnicompetence, Lance McClain was perfectly clear. After that terrifying fiasco he'd been through, it was like it had cleansed his memory, and he felt more cleaner, more freer than he'd probably ever been in his life. During that serene calm, Lance organised his prioties:

1.) See Shiro.

2.) See S.T.A.R Labs.

The rational part of his brain told him to get his crazy ass over to S.T.A.R Labs where Sam, Pidge and Hunk could find out what the ever-living hell was wrong with him. He'd already seen Keith, he could see whoever he needed to see after he got his physical health back into shape, potentially avoiding any hazardous situations like the last one that could possibly even damage himself in the process. He had no idea what was happening to him, and finding that out would be the best course of action he could offer himself at the time being.

The rest of his brain told him to see Shiro.

And see Shiro he did.

After Keith finished helping Allura with the things she'd dropped, which took a significant amount of time to gather up (Allura was organised, but she despised plastic pockets and preferred manila folders, which Keith kept telling her would be her ultimate demise. There was an 'I told you so' thrown in while Keith was helping her clean up, that was for sure). After Allura apologised and thanked the other man, Keith turned around from her, expecting to see Lance standing right where he left him.

Lance was gone.

Keith smiled inwardly.

* * *

Lance McClain arrived at the front door of the Voltron City Police Department head office, a large office complex, after climbing the unusually large amount of steps outside (he always hated that climb everyday to work, and felt envious of Shiro and his powerful leg muscles). This time, though, the climb didn't really effect him that much, or at least not as much as he remembered. He noted he had abs after recieving a lightning bolt to the head, so, who knows, maybe his thighs were really fucking built now. But that was not the thing on his mind at the moment.

Takashi Shirogane was.

He needed to see Shiro.

After entering those fancy swivel doors that he always loved in a piece of architecture, Lance made a beeline towards the lift that took him a few floors up to the main place of operations for VCPD, where Shiro's office was situated. He should be there, Lance reassured himself. He had to be there.

To be fair, a lot could happen in nine months. Lance didn't know whether Shiro got promoted and recieved one of those fancier offices one floor above the main floor, or moved out of this campus entirely, or even sent away to the CIA or something. Hell, Shiro could have gotten an entirely different job for all he knew. Lance considered these possibilities, but quickly pushed them out of the front of his mind for they were completely not something Shiro would do. Apart from accept a new promotion. That man needed a better desk.

Lance was so thoroughly entranced by his own thoughts that he didn't even register the lift opening to his designated floor. The lanky man quickly shook off what came over him and entered, hands in pockets and face completely devoid of any notable emotion. It was only when Lance turned around to the wall the lift was built in and took in that giant gold plaque which had "Voltron City Police Department" emblazened on it was when he broke out into a small smile. He missed this place, even if he couldn't remember actually missing it while in a coma.

Turning away from the giant plaque which towered over him and everyone else in the room, Lance looked upon the large, bustling facility which hadn't changed a bit since he was last there. Everything was in place: there were two floors that made up the large office, the second one with an overhead balcony above the first one, and flights of stairs on either end of the room which lead to other offices. The first level was where Shiro's office was supposed to be. Lance's smile widened even further, and half-walked, half-ran into the first floor, past all the police officers doing their own thing. Some shot looks at the random guy dressed in civilian clothes like he wasn't supposed to be here, and others' eyes widened like they'd seen a ghost. Quite right for them, too.

Lance McClain, as he passed everyone and everything beside him, realised nearly nothing had changed since he was in a coma.

Lance McClain was expecting Shiro to be unchanged after his nine months absence.

Lance McClain nearly had a heart attack when he saw Shiro at the desk right at the back of the room.

With a big gashing scar running across the middle of his face.

And a _prosthetic arm._

Jesus Christ, Shiro lost an arm.

Lance was frozen in place. There was nothing he could do, but stand and gape at the older man from across the room. The man that he knew his whole life as a perfect police officer, never getting into any sort of serious injury, without an arm. Any sort of serene calm that was present when Lance was at the VCPN evaporated into a sinking, deep, pressing sadness that seemed to extend as far down as Lance's heart could reach within him.

Shiro perked up from his desk on a whim and saw Lance, across the office, staring at him, and looking more broken in his life than he'd ever seen him.

Lance slowly walked towards him, and a pit formed in Shiro's stomach reacting to the conversation that was bound to come between the two of them.

Takashi Shirogane was usually a man of great confidence. That was a fact many people who knew him knew about him. Shiro never had any problems with public speaking, evident by the way he spoke on police press conferences with reporters, or to other people. He could talk to Keith very easily, which made him more argumentative against him in all honesty, which could be for the better or for the worse in certain situations. But Lance, in this situation?

Lance just made Shiro want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Lance always seemed happy and free to share his emotions, and could be read like an open book. Shiro wasn't very much of an open book, but could talk to people nonetheless. He couldn't exactly talk to Lance that much, which made this certain predicament very, very difficult.

But, alas, it had to be done.

Shiro only realised Lance was at the foot of his desk when he bumped into it, which made Shiro stare Lance in the eyes. The tears were already falling, of course. Shiro immediately stood up from his chair and wrapped Lance in a great, comforting hug which wasn't exactly that comforting to Shiro at the time being. The detective could feel the stares burning into his back and sides from the scene he and his adoptive son (mostly the latter) were creating, but paid no notice, as this was Lance's moment, and Lance's alone. He could feel Lance heaving against his own body, and even Lance's height didn't match up to Shiro's so was left with him crying on Shiro's shoulder. Shiro knew that his crying would probably go from steady rain to torrential downpour any second, if the past twelve years had taught Shiro anything. Slowly, Shiro released his grip on Lance and left a little bit of space between them.

"C'mon, Lance, let's talk in the corridor."

And so they did.

Well, more like Lance ended up _bawling_ on Shiro's shirt, staining it with streaks of tears, but Shiro let him anyway. Like he cared about the uniform. Hell, Lance didn't even know what happened to Shiro in the first place, but was still crying his eyes out like he was eleven again at the time of his mother's death. Shiro thought about it, and realised that was the first time this had happened, where Lance ended up crying on his shoulder, and proceeded to many more times down the track of him living under Shiro's roof. Every single time, Shiro waited for him to stop or at least calm down to the occasional sniffle, no matter where the place or time. Lance recognised this, and was infinitely in debt to Shiro and his generosity.

After a while, Lance did calm down, face still buried into the crook of Shiro's neck as he embraced him. Shiro refrained from using his prosthetic hand to pat him on the back, but knew painfully well that Lance knew he was doing so. It made his eyes droop as Lance's sobs slowly quieted down into hiccups and sniffs, but still they embraced each other like no tomorrow.

Eventually, Lance pulled away.

Of course he'd be the first person to pull away.

Shiro knew it was coming. His time was up.

"I missed you." Lance croaked, eyes red and puffy and tear stains running down his cheeks, smudged by Shiro's shirt. He gave a small smile.

"I missed you too, Lance." Shiro said back, smiling wider, which prompted Lance to smile even wider than before, which lead to both of them laughing together as they held each other. Lance pulled themselves apart again and stared into Shiro's eyes, and for a second, they flickered from happy reunion to a saddened sense of dread. This whole ordeal was not only emotionally taxing on Lance but on Shiro as well, and just couldn't hold the facade, leading his eyes to flick down in shame.

Lance looked down at Shiro's prosthetic arm.

"What happened?" He asked simply, and the other man winced. He'd seen this conversation in his head so many times, but nothing could prepare him for the real thing. Shiro took in a deep breath, his chest enlarging by quite the size, and let it out on a heavy sigh burdened with nine months of having this weight on his shoulders, the weight of that night.

Shiro started.

"It was on the night you were hit." The detective began, "I was sent out for an investigation with one other officer - you remember Hellsing, right?-" Lance nodded, "-Good. He and I went to this old, abandoned barnyard where the Mardon brothers were supposed to be hiding out. You were investigating the bank scene they robbed on that morning, remember?"

Lance gave a tired smile; he remembered every single event that happened that day. Shiro started up again.

"We were running a routine investigative search of the place, until Hellsing was shot." Shiro's face darkened, shrouded in memory of that fateful night. "Right between the eyes, there was no saving him. It was Clyde Mardon. He had me pinned behind that Mustang you told us to look for. He and his brother Mark were planning to escape Voltron City using a small plane, and Mark was driving. I tried to tag him, but..."

Lance could already see where this was going, or something along the lines of it. Shiro's brow darkened his eyes, the light from above casting a shadow across them.

"The building was really old," He explained, "Clyde managed to shoot the supportive beams above me, and the entire thing started to crumble. The metal was sharp and jagged, and... Well, it hit me across the face, and..."

Both of them turned to the prosthetic arm. It was held up in between the two men, and Lance stared at it like an object to be looked upon, but not touched in any way. He was scared to touch it: not that it would break or anything, but rather that if he touched it, it would somehow cement this nightmare of a reality into his mind, making it all the more real.

"The entire building crashed upon me. It was lucky the rescue team got to me when they did, or I would have bled out. The Mardon brothers apparently got into the air, but the shockwave from the S.T.A.R Labs explosion shot their plane out of the sky. We never found their bodies, so they were assumed dead." For a few moments, Shiro adopted his 'press conference' voice, as if to divert the attention from his tragedy to something more formal as a way to cope, but he knew Lance wouldn't buy it. He was smarter than that.

Lance was quiet for a moment, his gaze interchanging between the arm in front of him and Shiro's eyes, painted with a vulnerability Lance had never seen before. It made him think he was breaching some sort of sacred trust between him and his foster parent, but deep down Lance knew he and Shiro could never go wrong. Not even this would bring them apart, no matter how much adjustment they'd have to make.

Eventually, Lance spoke, and Shiro dreaded the next words that would come out of his mouth.

"How much did it cost?"

Shiro's expression raised itself in surprise. Okay, not what he was expecting.

But then, they relaxed. Of course, who was he kidding. This was Lance he was talking about. Shiro's mouth curled into a slight smile, "Actually, it was free. S.T.A.R Labs provided me it and told me they'd check up on it once every six months. Really generous, they even offered to take you in on that night and help you. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to see you when you were hit by lightning, I was in intensive care. I only found out the day later."

Lance looked confused, pursing his lips at the older man in front of him.

"But Sam said that he was there with me on that night - who made the decision to send me to S.T.A.R Labs?"

Now Shiro really beamed, or as close to beaming as he could under the circumstances. "Actually, it was Keith who agreed."

Lance's eyes lit up at the new information. Oh, God, he was going to go home after this and give Keith the biggest hug he'd ever seen in his life.

"I wasn't exactly comfortable with you staying with an institution that put the entire city in danger, but they were doing a good job, and both Keith and I knew that it was the only way for us to save you, so you were under their supervision for the entire nine months you were out. Tell Sam I owe him my life, as I have told him countless times over the course of which you were in a coma."

Now it was Lance's turn to beam. "Of course."

But there was something still itching at the back of Lance's mind. Something that he may or may not want to know the answer to.

"So, how have things been between you and Matt?" Lance asked out of curiosity. Many things could change in nine months, and he really hoped he and Shiro hadn't called their relationship off or anything.

Shiro stiffened, and Lance's worst fears showed their ugly heads. 

Shiro's head fell, and Lance tilted his head in confusion. 'What could have possibly gone wrong?' Lance thought. Shiro's shoulders slumped, and for a few seconds, Lance feared the worst.

A single tear ran its way down Shiro's face, and dropped to the floor. The detective took a shaky breath, and let it out to calm himself.

"Matt was working at S.T.A.R Labs the night the particle accelerator exploded." Shiro didn't look at Lance's face while he was explaining what happened in fear of what Lance would do, "He... something went wrong. He didn't..."

All of the happiness Lance was experiencing beforehand completely dissipated into pure, unadulterated dread. No... no, no, no, this can't be happening. Matt can't be...

Matt can't be _dead_ , can he?

Despite how deep the forensic scientist was in denial, he couldn't deny the facts that now joined together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The was Samuel Holt looked when he told Lance he'd lost more than just his legs. And he finally worked out why Pidge, that small scientist, looked so much like Matt.

Because her real name was Katie, and she was Matt's sister.

Lance recalled all those moments Matt mentioned having a sister while he was over for dinner at his house, and felt both a sense of immense loss and a sense of finality between the two. 

But the immense loss overcame the finality. And Lance felt constricted, he felt choked. He felt like he needed some air, like he needed some space and some time alone, he just needed to be alone-

"Shiro, I-I need some... some time. Alone." Lance stuttered out, which brought Shiro out of his brooding stupor, the tears he was shedding long gone as he was notorious for being a quick recovery from any emotional turmoil. "I just need to clear my head."

Lance ran down the corridor, and left Shiro alone with his resurfaced memories of his hope and joy no more.

When Lance got out of the elevator to the ground floor of the VCPD office building, he took the back door out instead of the front door. He didn't want to be in the middle of the bustling streets of Voltron City as of now. Keeping his posture low and unremarkable, Lance McClain made his way out to the back parking lot in the middle of an alley, where no people bothered him apart from the telltale signs of civilisation in the form of the smell of food trucks and the indistinct chattering of people and vehicles alike. 

Lance held back his tears this time. He felt absolutely drained, so he doubted he'd cry for long this time. He knew that he would absolutely let loose of his tears in the next coming days, so there was something to look forward to. So, taking a jittery breath in, the forensic scientist set back to S.T.A.R Labs.

He stopped in his tracks when he noticed his hand was shaking.

At first, Lance thought it was a nervous jitter. A muscle spasm. His emotional state was practically in shambles now, so there was no telling what toll that would have on his body. He raised the aformentioned shaking hand up to his face to see what the problem was.

His hand wasn't in a nervous jitter. Or a muscle spasm.

In fact, his hand was shaking so fast all he saw was a skin-coloured blur.

Lance's eyes widened. Oh, God. It was happening again. The strange, wacky shit was happening, and Lance didn't know it was because he was on something or something actually problematic was happening to his body.

He needed to get back to S.T.A.R Labs as fast as he could, so he set off into a run and somehow managed to, in the span of less than a second, divert off course, run five meters across the length of the alleyway and crash against the boot of a police car parked on the side of an alley, shattering the back windscreen in the process.

_'What is happening to me...?'_

Lance got up from it rather quickly, and realised that the time it took him to travel around four to five meters from his standing position in the middle of the alley to the now-wrecked police cruiser in front of him was less than a second.

He'd managed to run five meters in nearly an instant, and that was both terrifying and utterly brilliant to Lance at the same time.

He didn't know what was going on with him, or his body, or practically his life anymore.

But by damn would he let this opportunity to go to waste.

Lance, in that moment, could have chosen two options out of this situation: he could pretent like he couldn't move faster than the eye could see, or he could fuck it and give it a go at the large, abandoned alleyway in front of him. Lance was usually a man grounded on solid Earth in terms of what was possible, and believed science was the key to anything. But he didn't believe in superpowers, that was for sure.

So, naturally, Lance went for the second option out.

'Fuck it', he thought.

So there he was, sprinting down an alleyway faster than any human had gone before, wind ripping through his hair and streaks of lightning trailing across his entire form, screaming like a banshee in terror and frightened for his life.

He honestly felt absolutely fucking brilliant about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> W o w, that took quite a long time to update. Whoops.
> 
> Time got away from me because school's starting and all, and the big band competition is coming up haha, I guess I'll be dying this semester then.
> 
> Okay, so no mention of dickbag Lotor in this chapter (sorry to disappoint) because it just didn't fit in right, but he will be emerging his dickbag face into the story soon, and any of you that have watched the flash may theorise about which role he's mirroring in this story.
> 
> Anywho, Lance finally starts running fast! My speedy boi is growing up.
> 
> And angst. You think this is a lot? Just fuckin' wait.

**Author's Note:**

> A y y y. This is my first shot at writing a Voltron fic, and what a better way than starting with a slightly self-indulgent cookie cutter superhero au?
> 
> So, this is based on the Flash 2014 TV series if any of you didn't know. The first chapter here starts off slow but it gets better with the second and then we've got the ball rolling. If any of you have watched the series, then... you know who to look out for.
> 
> Let's just see if this actually garners any attention, why don't we?


End file.
